High-Stakes Wager in Las Vegas

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The real high-rollers on the gaudy, neon-lighted Strip these days do not have dice or cards in their hands. They are holding blueprints. The owners of this city's hotel-casinos have embarked upon a building spree that is unprecedented even for a town that has enjoyed three decades of virtually uninterrupted growth and prides itself on its Wild West boom-town mentality.

The boom comes just a few years after some doomsayers predicted that competition from Atlantic City, among other things, spelled the end of Las Vegas's heyday. Instead, new resorts are being built or planned up and down the Strip, while the owners of existing hotel-casinos work feverishly to add new rooms. On one choice parcel of land, Golden Nugget Inc.'s new 3,000-room resort complex is beginning to take shape. A few traffic lights down, Circus Circus Enterprises is working on plans for a new 3,000-room hotel-casino, its second on the Strip. Abundance of Rooms

Nearby, the Riviera Hotel and Casino, which is owned by Meshulam Riklis and which emerged from bankruptcy proceedings only a few years ago, is in the midst of adding 2,736 rooms. The Hilton Hotel Corporation's Flamingo Hilton is adding 1,600 rooms and the Holiday Corporation's Holiday Inn is adding 2,330.

Those are only a sampling. If all the projects in the planning or building stages are actually completed, more than 20,000 new hotel rooms will open in the next several years, a 33 percent increase over the 60,000 available now. Even if, as some analysts expect, only half the plans come to fruition, the number of new rooms would still be greater than all of those currently available in Atlantic City.

There are huge sums at stake. The new Golden Nugget project, for instance, would cost at least $550 million. And some analysts think there is the danger that the city could become overbuilt with hotel rooms, especially if the economy slips into recession next year and tourism stops growing at the healthy pace of recent years.

But casino operators, like gamblers on a roll, see nothing but certain payoffs for their own expansion plans. Positive Thinking

''Lead pipe cinch on a downhill grade,'' Stephen A. Wynn, the chairman and chief executive of Golden Nugget, said of his company's project, the most lavish and expensive one under way.

There is plenty of reason for the gambling industry's optimism. The number of visitors to the city increased 37 percent between 1981 and last year, pushing hotel occupancy rates to 83.3 percent in 1987 from 75.7 percent in 1981, despite the addition of nearly 9,000 rooms in that period.

Gambling revenues have grown every year, despite the recession in the early 1980's. The growth rate of revenues in Clark County, where Las Vegas is situated, was 14 percent last year, the best showing since 1979. Gambling profits for the strongest of the operators, including Circus Circus, Hilton and Caesars, have been growing in recent years, although other casinos, like Dunes Hotel and Country Club, continue to struggle. Success in Marketing

Most industry executives and analysts expect revenues to grow 7 to 10 percent annually during the next few years, driven largely by the city's success in marketing itself to conventions and the industry's strategy of wooing more middle-income slot-machine players to complement the high rollers.

''We all believe we haven't completely scratched the surface of the potential marketplace for Las Vegas,'' Arthur S. Waltzman, president of the Riviera, said.

Some analysts, however, wonder whether casino executives are not suffering from the same delusion of invincibility that afflicts gamblers who roll a few sevens in a row. 'Too Much Happening'

''There is some justification for all the building because business has been strong and the outlook is pretty favorable for the next year or two,'' said Harold Vogel, an analyst at Merrill Lynch Capital Markets. ''But one does get the impression that there is too much happening at once.''

Mr. Vogel said while Las Vegas casinos had come through the last recession in good shape, ''they weren't in the middle of a building boom during the last recession.''

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But industry executives and some analysts dismiss such warnings about the overbuilding, noting that many of the top-class hotels are regularly booked solid and that there is a chronic shortage of rooms for big conventions.

They argue that many casinos that are expanding or building new hotel-casinos will be better positioned than rivals if a downturn does occur, since the newest facilities would tend to attract those gamblers who do come to town. Perhaps more important, they say they learned a lot from the early 1980's, when they were hit with the recession, the opening of gambling in Atlantic City and airline deregulation that resulted in fewer direct flights here. Clad in Polyester

Indeed, casinos have become better at marketing themselves, both domestically and abroad. Such Casinos as Circus Circus have shown that polyester-clad gamblers who arrive in campers can be as profitable a market as the silk-shirt crowd that the high-roller establishments, like Caesars Palace and the Golden Nugget, fly in on their corporate jets.

Caesars, among others, has worked hard at developing a loyal clientele among foreign high-rollers, especially Asians.

''We truly believe Vegas can absorb all this building,'' said Mr. Waltzman, who was installed by Mr. Riklis to run the Riviera after predecessors overexpanded just before the last recession, leading to the casino's bankruptcy filing. ''But we're going to have to manage it skillfully and market it well.'' $2 Blackjack Over Baccarat Mr. Waltzman, who has directed the Riviera more toward the mass market mined so successfully by Circus Circus, has his work cut out for him. For one thing, he has to contend with the drawing power of Circus Circus and the lavish Flamingo Hilton, which dominate the the market for people who prefer slot machines and $2 blackjack to high-brow baccarat.

But this time, Mr. Waltzman said, the Riviera is not getting in over its head financially as it did in the early 1980's. He would not specify how much the Riviera is spending to expand, but he said the company is not taking on external debt to fund the building. Instead, it is paying for it out of its internal cash flow and additional investment by Mr. Riklis, the financier whose empire ranges from travel companies to financial services. ''That's the advantage of having an owner with deep pockets,'' Mr. Waltzman said. Golden Nugget's Venture

Mr. Wynn, too, will have to watch his step. Already, Wall Street is watching carefully to see how much Golden Nugget ends up spending on its new resort. Some analysts think the ultimate price tag could rise several hundred million above the $550 million budget. And competitors think the new casino could end up stealing customers from the company's existing downtown casino.

Mr. Wynn said even with the debt the company will take on, the operating costs for the new resort will be in line with the competition's. The new hotel-casino, he said, will be more efficient than existing operations.

He said he would probably steer his loyal high-roller customers to the new hotel-casino but added that he did not expect any trouble continuing to fill the downtown facility with less-affluent gamblers.

No one is watching the activity on the Strip more carefully than Henry Gluck, chairman and chief executive of Caesars World Inc. The new Golden Nugget resort is going up right next door to his flagship, Caesars Palace, and several of the big expansion projects, including the Flamingo Hilton's, are right across the street.

Nevertheless, Mr. Gluck has decided not to build any additional rooms. Rooms don't make money in Las Vegas, casinos do, he said.

With all those new rooms going up around him, Mr. Gluck prefers to try to draw in gamblers who are staying at other hotels. To that end he is redesigning Caesars Palace's front entrance with ornate statues and landscaping to attract more traffic, and he is upgrading its restaurants, adding a shopping mall and expanding the Palace's casinos to lure people inside.